


A Place to Call Home

by Unicornsfartglitter



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Acceptance, Fluff, M/M, Past Childhood Abuse, Sad Daryl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 12:05:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14831961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unicornsfartglitter/pseuds/Unicornsfartglitter
Summary: Daryl grows up knowing he’s just existing but never knew he would find someone someday to make a house a home.





	A Place to Call Home

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think, it came to me on a whim.

When Daryl is four he learns hiding in the closet is his safest bet not to be beaten by his pa. The kicks and stabs keep coming but the hard floor of the enclosed space is an area of comfort that sometimes when locked from inside keeps his drunk dad at bay.

At sixteen he learns Merle can’t be his savior, his stints at juvie tallying up and when he does come home he’s either drunk or too high to protection. His name calling and at him ignoring Daryl’s growing number of scars tell him this is a life he will live alone.

When twenty two hits Daryl still lives at home being beaten on but helping move moonshine and drugs for his pa helps ease the assaults but the abuse is still enough to make it hard to wake up in the morning, want to live for tomorrow but he does because it’s all he knows.

He's twenty four and after screwing a few trashy women in back allies he registers it’s not want he wants. His heart hammering in equal parts adrenaline and fear he let’s an older man fuck into him hard and fast, it feels better than a woman but still feels wrong. Despite that he still cums harder than ever before and he knows he’s gay and it must be kept a secret.

At thirty five pa is dead and he lives in a nasty old shack, sometimes Merle lives with him bringing home whores and drugs to shoot up but then he’s back in jail and Daryl is alone to think of his life. When his brother is there he tags along doing things he would never do by himself and when he’s gone he keeps a steady job but happiness isn’t something obtainable.

Thirty nine brings Daryl nothing more than drinking and wondering if there is more out there for him. The shack is falling apart, he hardly has running water and Merle is in jail for another six months. He’s never had a boyfriend and his tally is nothing but a few sad easy fucks in allies all by men. This is all there is he thinks, things will never get better and that’s what it means to be a Dixon.

Walkers rise at age forty, dead eating on the living and tearing families apart not that he ever knew the value of that. Merle and him run group to group looting from the innocent, Daryl is past feeling like shit for being a bad guy when his brother is around. This is all it’s going to be, if he thought his life could get better it was impossible now.

Merle dies when Daryl is forty one, he was gone so long it was like he was already dead and even though the only thing he ever brought him was hookers and talked him down it hurts. Gray dead eyes haunt him in his dreams reminding him he was the one to give him his final death and it was what needed to be done but it makes it no better.

“You're gonna be the last man standing.” Beth tells him at forty two and he knows it’s true and that’s no comfort. He looks at her smiling, her blond hair blowing into her beautiful blue wide eyes and if he could ever love a girl she would be it. She's innocent and kind, too cheerful and radiant to stay in this world and he smiles at her but cries inside because he knows then, she will die next.

Trying to save her he feels like it’s done in vain, she’s stolen in the night like so many were before walkers and he runs on fumes trying to save her, keep something nice in this world that’s already lost Hershel and Dale and when he sees Beth’s blood splatter on the floor he understands It’s the only way it could be.

By forty three Daryl has realizes he can have nice things like family and a pretty house, it’s behind a gate and he hears the walkers moan but it’s okay. The white house suffocates him but Rick needs it. Judith and Carl too and he will stay to protect them because he can never be really happy but he has a home. It’s not made of support beams and cement but of strangers that became more. and sleeping at night comes with no visions of Merle or being abused.

Daryl is still forty three when he’s reminded of his past, thrown in a dark room unlike his closet that offered refuge, it’s darker and the loud music beats in his eardrums making him delirious and sleep deprived. He sees Merle and pa, ma even and his best friend at eight who died at his father's hands unable to escape with his life like him. Daryl’s reminded nothing good can happen in this life.

At forty four Negan’s released and helps them, bares arms and defends them all and it’s weird seeing him take down a walker and save his life but still two months later he returns the favor. Those cruel eyes glimmer with specks of amber joking not at his expense like he’s used to but instead with him and Negan’s palm is so warm on his shoulder, he shudders when it touches his face to inspect a new cut.

Negan saves Judith when an enemy tears open a section of their walls and he walks hip to hip with Rick taking each of them down and when they hold a feast to celebrate once the walls are repaired he sees Negan looking at him but it’s different, something he hasn’t seen before in a man’s eyes.

Running from yourself is hard, staring in a mirror seeing greasy hair and too tanned skin tarnished with deep white scars that can’t ever fade. Everyone is at ease in Alexandria now but to Daryl it’s still insulation and white painted siding but someone’s looking at him and he thinks they see more on his skin, beneath it than he can see. Looking away from the mirror he accepts that this is the way it is, he won’t ever see what his friends see, what Negan sees but the world seems brighter nonetheless.

Daryl is forty five when he moves into a new house with Negan. The fondation is more than that, it’s what he’s never had before, a place to call his and share with another. He’s touched like he’s made of stone to be worshiped, not china or trash. Hazel eyes stare into his soul and smile taking him in just as he is. Daryl realizes he’s in love, he’s beautiful and safe, and he finally has a home.

Being a Dixon is just that, a name and nothing more.

 

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End file.
